Fil d'ariane

[rapport TL ] prêtre de Bogdar : 1.62

il l'avais pas celui la le nof

Citation:

Bonedancer TL Report: (6/16/03)

OVERVIEW

Bonedancers (BDs for short) are cloth casters with widely varying issues depending on their specs. The differences between spec behavior in PvE and RvR are so profound that the issues are often spec specific. Like all cloth casters, BD performance is crucially linked to cold, matter and body magic resists which are at an all time high due to SC and constantly improving gear drops and quests. They have no CC (beside root) but limited ability to withstand melee engagement at cost of low and power-inefficient damage output in suppression and weak DoTs compensated by strong melee pets in bone army.

CONCERNS

1) Pet AI

Each spec has various issues linked to pet behavior. Ranged pets need to find their “ideal” position before starting to cast/shoot instead of casting right away. Archer pets have long delay between redrawing their bows reducing their DPS too much. Commander will ignore a healer pet being beaten on by a mob when defensive. Pathing in many SI dungeons, caldera in delling crater often lead to pets dropping below the ground or in the wall trying to position themselves to cast spells or shoot arrows. Healer pets can run away very far when they get agro after healing too much often leading to them running into other mobs. Pets run off after fights or fight each others at time. They also did not get changed from previous aggressive mode since they still don't defend BD nor attack nearby targets (mobs or players). Finally the lack of ability for commanders to sit in defense while ranged pets attack is counter-productive with the design of the specs (especially darkness spec).

2) Low level suppression performance

This is a major reason for the outcry on suppression bonedancers. Most casters are somewhat more powerful in BGs than in RvR 50 but even for a caster class, BDs are extremely powerful at low level (BG 0-1) due to scaling of BG-level RvR (low resists and buffs mostly). They benefit from 1500 range lifetap instant interrupt even with no spec in suppression. There is no reason to give access to such a powerful tool to specs other than full suppression and even then due to pace of BG RvR, this is an issue in BG 0-1 levels for full suppression bonedancers. To reduce the frustration of other players when faced with supp BDs, the lifetap could be reduced in range at low suppression spec. This would not hurt the caster tanking theme since it’d be usable for melee and would not alter downtime since other longer range spells are used for pulling. Tentatively, range 500 for supp 1,2,4,6,9. 700 for supp 13 and 17, 1000 for lvl 22 and 29 and 1500 for supp 37 and 47.

3) Bonedancer lack of groupability

Suppression has one ABS high-level buff that only benefits non-casters. Bone Army has no spells that can help anyone else in group and darkness only has body debuff which is of little benefit to other casters in realm except for BD lifetap. The pet AI is often more of a liability in group in PvE. Damage output is lower than both RM and SMs without utility spells such as dmg add, stat debuffs, PBT, CC. Thus there is little incentive to group a BD of any spec either in PvE or RvR. Making some of the pet buffs group/realm-castable could help (dmg add in BA, ablative pet buff in suppression). Letting some pet buffs extend to group could help (haste buff and DS from buffer pet). Adding a group-sharable minor power regen buff to darkness nuker pets could help as well.

4) Lack of raid role

This is somewhat of an issue shared with other casters but worsened for BDs who rely on DoTs and lifetaps. Beside darkness DDs, the BD lifetaps and DoTs suffer from extra resist code on lvl 65+ mobs and pets are easily killed and present management issues due to pathing. Many BDs will not summon pets in raids or only healers parked far behind and will not use spells but use melee staff as it does more damage than spells on mobs above lvl 70. This makes those raids an exercise in frustration or in going afk if BD is wiser.

B) SPEC-SPECIFIC ISSUES

1) Darkness

As noted above in pet AI concerns, this specs has issues with both nukers (moving before nuking) and debuffer (AE debuff) pets. Also due to their levels (75% caster max) and the full resist code in PvE, darkness pets (all casters) have very high resist on any yellow and above con mobs. The spec relies on snare+dd for damage output which often lends itself to kiting. Yet, to have pets do any damage, commander has to get in melee (healing downtime) to get nukers/debuffers to cast on mob all of which either do no dmg or break the snare from BD. This is counter-effective. With introduction of base DD doing same damage as snare+dd, the spec lacks reason to spec in past reducing variance in DD. AE debuff should be single target for debuffer. Spec DD could either be higher dmg (209 base) or debuff+dd or remain the same with the addition of an AE spell to justify speccing in darkness.

2) Suppression

Suppression is the most popular spec. PvE is right on target. In RvR, the spec addresses the survival problem faced by all casters but this makes the specs an annoying one to fight . Yet the interruption factor and survival are the only things going for this spec. The DPS of lifetap is the lowest DD of any cloth caster spec spell. To boost damage, supp BDs have to overlap with darkness DD or BA DoTs which doubles the power cost which is a large balancing factor in large scale RvR. Thus supp BDs are great 1-on-1, ok in 8 vs 8 encounters and weak in zerg vs zerg or keeps. The spec suffers from power wasting pet ablative buff at high level (counters less than half a melee hit on pet for 8% power or so) and bugged focus AE snare (no AE effect at all).

3) Bone Army

PvE is good solo even with broken archer pet. Issues remain in PvE groups due to pet AI but most are related to RvR and to lack of group friendliness. Pet damage just doesn’t translate in RvR because they can be disabled (CC or dmg) so easily due to low con. However, DoTs do not compensate for this. At level 30, DoTs are 75% of Cabalist DoTs and BDs have 2 minion pets of maxxed level (full BA spec). At 50, BD still have 2 max level minions (same relative power) but yet the DoTs drop to 62% Cabalist dmg. With this low DoTs and melee pets being the only viable ones in BA, their performance in RvR is very disappointing. I suggest a boost to 75% Cab DoTs for single target DoTs and 80% for the AE DoT. This AE DoT is used mostly in RvR so it would not affect PvE performance.

C) NEW ISSUES

Mostly those arising from the new darkness baseline 50 DD in 1.62. This made darkness spec less necessary by making snare+dd 50 too expensive to get for returns. This was a boost of supp/dark templates which are very popular but a hit as far as reason to spec in darkness is concerned. It further emphasizes the need for darkness spec to get improvements outside of snare+dd.

Pet aggressive mode is totally unchanged from 1.61 for Bonedancers. Contrary to patch claims, the pets on aggressive will not attack a nearby enemy player nor will they defend BD if she';s being hit on by enemy player.

D) OTHER ISSUES

- Unique RA does not buff all pets as advertized
- Pet-only AE buffs do not buff all pets as delve value shows
- Healer pet can get broken when taking multiple damage
- Wild Minion RA not available to BD makes impossible getting Minion control
- Minions become unresponsive after commander is sent to attacks doors
- Suppression lifetap is on same timer as str/dex debuffs
- Focus AE snare has no AE component
- Commander pet in aggressive mode does not attack enemy players nor defend BD
- Pets running off or fighting each other after fights